Voices from the Air (23 page)

By the beginning of 1944, Simpson and the other war correspondents were covering a theatre of war where the momentum was now with the Allies. The New Guinea campaigns in the Huon Peninsula and the Finisterre Ranges to the north east were still underway, but the initiative was with the Australians and the Americans. Within the year, the Allies would have control of most of the north coast of Australian and Dutch New Guinea and the islands further north and MacArthur would open the campaign to re-take the Philippines. To the east, the Americans were in the Solomons and had contained the Japanese on Bougainville. The New Britain campaign had begun with the landings at Arawe and Cape Gloucester in December, and the massive Japanese base at the port of Rabaul was largely contained.

Frank Legg
joined the group of ABC war correspondents in Port Moresby at the beginning of January. He was an experienced soldier and broadcaster and the ABC intended he would only spend a few months in New Guinea and would then move on to train with Australian paratroopers. According to Legg, the ABC general manager Charles Moses had an image of a war correspondent with one of the new portable wire recorders strapped to his back, parachuting into adventure with his microphone as his weapon. Thankfully for Legg, who
had a fear of heights, the paratrooper part of the plan never happened.
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Legg was born in Kent and from the age of ten until eighteen was educated at an English boarding school, where in his last year he won the prize for best all-round boy at school, excelling in soccer, rugby, hockey and cricket.
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He had a good education and a comfortable family life but none of the social standing that would normally land him a job at the Bank of England. His first job, as a Bank of England clerk, came through his father's contacts in the Royal Marines, but Legg believed the bank was mostly interested in acquiring a good, slow bowler for the cricket team and a centre half for the rugger season.
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Frank was an adventurous spirit, and in 1927, at the age of 21, he arrived in Australia by ship as the welfare officer in charge of a group of young male migrants. At one point during the voyage to Australia, the captain had called in Legg to defuse a looming fight between a group of miners and his own young charges – Legg had accomplished this delicate political feat by getting comprehensively drunk with the miners. In Australia, he struggled to survive by selling insurance, then started writing as a freelance journalist for newspapers and eventually began broadcasting radio talks for the ABC under the name of ‘The Prattler'. A genuinely warm and engaging man, Legg became a popular ABC radio personality and broadcaster on several national programs, including as the cohost of a daily early-morning session, while he continued to write freelance articles and features for the papers.

When the war came, he enlisted for service with the AIF and served in North Africa and the Middle East – he was one of the Rats of Tobruk and also fought in the bloody battles at El Alamein with the 2/48th Battalion. The 2/48th would become the most decorated Australian battalion of the Second
World War, and Legg was Regimental Sergeant Major at Alamein.

Legg had married since his arrival in Australia from England. The relationship failed and he was estranged from his wife and young son, and after his return from North Africa and the Middle East, he left the Army and become an ABC war correspondent. In Moresby, one of the first people he met was the technician Bill MacFarlane. Like Simpson with Len Edwards, Legg would spend a lot of time with MacFarlane recording in the field over the next two years. It did not take Legg long to decipher the apparently phlegmatic persona of the young but experienced MacFarlane and his fondness for a drink and amiable company.

He was the oldest hand among the correspondents then in Moresby. Short-sighted, black-haired, sardonic, he gave a first impression of being indolent and unenthusiastic. An avid reader of digests, he invariably grumbled when anyone mentioned work. I was, however, soon to discover the qualities that lay beneath his slow manner and caustic humour. When things were tough, under the most appalling conditions, Bill MacFarlane conjured from his mysterious gear discs of flawless quality such as no other technician I have known has ever rivalled, even in the air conditioned studios of Sydney.
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With Bill Marien covering the fighting around Shaggy Ridge in the Finisterre Ranges and Fred Simpson doing recordings around Moresby, Legg flew out alone to Finschhafen and to
catch up with his ‘mob' – his mates of the 2/48th Battalion. From Finschhafen he travelled by jeep along the jungle and beach tracks of the Huon Peninsula coastline, through territory only recently captured by the 9th Division as it pushed northwards. The terrain drew inevitable comparisons with Legg's experiences in North Africa.

There's been only one light shower of rain in the last fortnight. And this particular track – in New Guinea of all places – is probably the dirtiest, dustiest road in the world. It's far worse than the Western Desert ever was. The earth's been churned into a surface of 18 inches or so of fine, black, choking dust . . . And when it rains, of course, the whole track turns into a vast bog.
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Legg followed the Australians as they pushed the Japanese along the coast with mortars and Matilda tanks. ‘When the mortar fire ceased, the two Matildas rumbled forward along the track (widening it as they went, by crashing down the trees on either side) and the accompanying infantrymen were enabled to force the Japs out of their positions at the expense of five men wounded.'
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With a forward patrol Legg came across an abandoned Japanese camp and the bodies of dead Japanese soldiers. ‘Already I was beginning to experience the strange callousness with which most Australians regarded dead Japanese.'
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He again found this different from his experience in North Africa and thought it was probably due to the fact that the retreating Japanese had often left their own dead to ‘the flies and the horror of bloated decomposition'. Legg did not express any thoughts about the effects of Japanese atrocities on the Australian attitude to the enemy dead, but he was aware of
the brutality of the Japanese style of warfare and was carrying a revolver: ‘In view of the Japanese treatment of civilian prisoners most of us were sensible enough to have some means of self-protection on hand.'
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His army service with the 2/48th in North Africa gave Legg a closer identification with the rank-and-file troops than many other correspondents. He had close friends in the army and there was an everyman quality to his wit, and his characterful face expressed his gregarious charm and humour. As he talked with the frontline soldiers of the 9th Division on the hard coastal push north, he found a common grievance. ‘Resentment was now running high' over comments by the Minister for the Army that even the frontline soldiers ‘had fresh meat every day, hot meals and other comforts'.
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The soldiers wanted the true story told and Legg was their man. One of his first stories for the radio audience back in Australia was about the contrasting conditions between the ‘base wallahs paradise' of Moresby and the conditions at the front for the ordinary infantryman or ‘footslogger'.

The forward infantryman lives with what he can carry on his body. Whether it pours with tropical rain, day and night, for weeks on end or whether he's covered in sweat and the thick black dust of the coast-tracks, he wears the shirt, trousers, socks and boots he stands up in with a pair of long gaiters round his ankles, and a battered, filthy old hat on his head. What gear he has in his pack may catch up with him once a fortnight – or once a month. And then he gets a change of clothing . . . One unit I've been living with for a few days exists chiefly on bully, M and V – that's a tinned mixture of meat and vegetables, and very dull it becomes after a day or two – and biscuits. They
get bread every now and then – sometimes quite regularly. And they get dehydrated potato – and nearly every day a little dehydrated cabbage or carrot to eke out the bully . . . if I may say so, when next you feel like grumbling at the horrors of rationing, think of the fighting man and . . . well, don't.
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After a brief return to Moresby, Legg headed back to the north when news was received of the capture of Sio on the top of the Huon Peninsula. Ahead still was the coastline to Saidor, Madang and on to Dutch New Guinea. Not many of Legg's scripts have survived, but one of the few that has, about the Sio campaign, summed up the general feeling that the Japanese were now on the back foot in New Guinea.

We are now roughly 120 miles from Madang – and pushing on a mile or two closer every day. Halfway between our troops and Madang is the American spear-head at Saidor. It may take a month – perhaps longer – for those two forces, and our troops in the Ramu valley, to meet, and crush the enemy in between. But when that time comes, the days of the Japanese in New Guinea will be numbered. And a very low number it will be.
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Legg made other brief trips north, including to join PT boat raids along the New Guinea coast, but from even these short periods away he had picked up the dengue virus, and back in Moresby his writing and recording were interrupted by episodes of fever, severe aches and an itchy rash. He returned at one point to find Fred Simpson was also ill and in hospital battling with a bout of malaria. The army was about to open a radio station in Moresby, 9PA, to be run jointly by the
ABC and the army, and Simpson had been preparing special programs to mark the opening. Legg took over production and hosting of the programs and the station was opened by General MacArthur and Charles Moses. What is believed to be a fairly accurate copy of MacArthur's opening speech highlighted the impact of radio on the life of troops in the field.

No campaign conditions in the history of war have entailed greater hardships than here . . . No one appreciates more than I the need of relaxation and recreation to alleviate the hardship and rigors of the field. To know what is transpiring in the world – to hear the tinkle of music and laughter – to feel something of the little familiar things that link us with home – this is what I hope this station can do.
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With short notice, Legg was sent to cover the American landings on the Admiralty Islands. The Admiralties, including Manus Island, the largest in the group, sat astride the Bismarck Sea leading to New Britain and the large Japanese base at Rabaul. The Americans landed at the end of February, accompanied by Legg and among others, the British correspondent for the
Daily Mirror
, Bill Courtenay, who carried a gold-headed walking-stick; and the Australian cameraman, Frank Bagnall. From on board the American destroyer, the USS
Sands
, Legg was fascinated by his first up-close sight of the power of a naval bombardment. On 29 February, with streams of tracer shells overhead, his landing craft hit the beach of Los Negros.

On the beach an extraordinary sight met my eyes – there was only one man standing. Frank Bagnall, the Australian
cameraman, was nonchalantly stepping over recumbent American bodies as he dutifully filmed the proceedings. He waved and called out: ‘Hullo Frank.'

I called back, waving in return. ‘Hullo Frank.'

For a moment I thought the casualty list must be enormous. Some of the bodies were only half out of the water, the sea breaking over their legs and eddying around their waists. But no, these were no corpses. They were men of the second wave, who, temporarily demoralised by the fire they had come through, and not too well officered, had dropped when they reached the beach.
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It proved to be a bloodier time for the succeeding waves of troops landing on the beach but, by two o'clock, Legg watched as General MacArthur came ashore to pin a medal on the chest of an American soldier. The fighting for the Admiralties continued until May when the Americans finally secured the islands. In his book,
War Correspondent
, Frank Legg later recalled the summing-up document on the Admiralties landings prepared by MacArthur's Intelligence staff at GHQ. It showed a map which compared the Southwest Pacific operations to Waterloo ‘with the implication, of course, that where Napoleon had failed, MacArthur had succeeded'.
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The summing up itself was essentially a puff-piece for MacArthur, concluding that the word ‘miraculous' was too superficial to encompass his overall achievement in isolating Rabaul and its garrison of tens of thousands of Japanese troops.

His first assignment as war correspondent now complete, Legg was brought back to Sydney. The 7th and 9th Divisions were also brought back to spell them from the field and to rebuild their numbers. The ABC proposed to record a series of radio documentaries on the Australian war in New Guinea.
Chester Wilmot worked with Frank Legg on the preparation of the series but when he left at short notice to become a BBC war correspondent covering the war in Europe, the task fell to Frank alone. He spent much of the remainder of the year, often with Bill MacFarlane, recording interviews for the documentaries with soldiers in camps on the Atherton Tablelands and elsewhere across Australia.
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